A/N: I everyone! Sorry I've been gone so long. I've been really busy... crying about George Blagden (hence the song lyrics this chapter- he does a really good cover!). Seriously though, I just lost my momentum and it was hard to get back on track.

I'm going to switch the type from Plays/Musicals to Books. It just makes way more sense, although my character descriptions will still be like the movie, since that's the version I'm most familiar with.

Also, this chapter is a filler-there's really no point to it except to develop their relationship. But I think it was about time they got their own chapter, and it was nice to not write something as depressing or angsty as the last few chapters. I hope you like it!

This is the start of something beautiful
This is the start of something new
You are the one who'd make me lose it all
You are the start of something new

-Ed Sheeran, This

For the second morning in a row, Enjolras woke up to Éponine's fist grinding into his ribs. She was splayed out the length of the couch, this time not inconvenienced by any other of the Amis. Her face was buried in the cushions and Enjolras could see the spots in her black shirt that were darker where it had been soaked through with sweat.

"Is this gonna become a habit, punching me in the mornings?" he asked bitterly, closing his eyes once again. Sleeping sitting up two days in a row wasn't helping his mood any.

"Depends, how long are you going to be staying unwelcomed in my house?" she answered, her voice muffled and almost incoherent from the couch cushions.

"You said we could stay."

"No, I said Musichetta could stay."

Why did I even bother? Enjolras thought. He sighed and rubbed his eyes. "I fell asleep reading. I figured Combeferre would wake me up." It was mostly the truth, except Combeferre had tried to wake him up, or so Enjolras vaguely remembered.

"I don't blame you," Éponine said, grabbing the book which had fallen to his feet. "This thing is huge. It's ridiculous. No wonder you fell asleep. It's like some form of punishment."

Enjolras shrugged. "It's actually really interesting."

Éponine flipped to the back of the book. "Eight hundred and forty-seven pages?! Shit!" She then flipped to a random page and began reading.

"Are you really going to read my textbook?" Enjolras asked after a minute.

Éponine looked up at him. "What? I figured you would be thrilled that I would want to learn about..." she looked at the cover of the book, "Trial Tactics and Methods. Actually, this might help me win an argument with Bahorel."

Enjolras raised an eyebrow.

"I'm just so bored," Éponine practically whimpered. Her leg was tapping violently and she began to chew on her lip.

"Did you sleep okay?" he asked.

"I didn't."

"At all?"

Éponine shook her head, and strands of hair stuck to the sweat on her forehead. "That's pretty usual."

Enjolras didn't have a reply.

"So, what's the plan for today?" she asked.

"I have class."

"But it's Friday."

"Well, I have Friday classes. I could call Courfeyrac?"

"Don't bother. I think he, Grantaire, and Gavroche were all going to do some brotherly bonding thing, whatever the hell that means."

"That means playing video games."

Actually, it probably meant they would play video games for about two hours, one of them would throw a fit (probably Grantaire), then they would pretend to fight each other, which would only end in Gavroche biting them. Then they would run around doing God-knows-what in the streets, probably shoving cats into mailboxes or something. Then they would sit around and whistle at the girls who walked by.

"Doesn't Gavroche have school?" Enjolras continued.

"Yeah, um… he got suspended."

Enjolras shouldn't have been surprised, but he was.

"Remember when we first met, and it was 'cause Gavroche was in trouble? Yeah, he locked the teacher out of the classroom and barricaded the door this time."

Enjolras laughed, which actually made Éponine jump. He didn't laugh often, but he laughed loud.

"I can just come with you," Éponine suggested.

"It's a second-year political science class. I bet Jehan-"

"Good, I'll actually learn something," she cut him off. "Maybe. Taking me out in public, that's your punishment for sleeping on my couch without my permission."

Enjolras had the foreign urge to say he didn't think of that as a punishment, but he shoved it down. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why not?" she asked, already a bit defensive.

"I just don't want you to get sick in the middle of class."

"I'm not going to get sick. Anyway, I figured you'd be all excited to have someone else interested in politics."

This last part was true. "I just have this memory of Grantaire puking all over this other girl's desk last year."

"Well I'm not Grantaire, and I'm not going to puke. What time does it start?"

Enjolras looked at his watch and groaned again. "Not for another three hours."

"What's the matter?" she teased. "I figured you'd be the five-a.m.-morning-jog type."

Once, this was true. Now, his days consisted solely of classes, studying, and planning. He used to only get three or four hours of sleep a night. This continued for maybe a month, but that's all it took for him to burn out. One morning he woke up on the kitchen floor, his breakfast that he didn't even remember preparing spilled all over him. "A man can't save the world if he's falling asleep in his cereal," Combeferre had said. That's when everything unnecessary got cut from his life.

"Did you clean?" Enjolras looked around, changing the subject. The plain walls looked a little whiter, like she had scrubbed them.

"Yeah, I, uh… had a lot of energy this morning."

"I didn't wake up?"

Éponine pushed herself off from the couch. "You snore," she teased. "I'll go shower really quick, then we can go."

Enjolras tried to go back to sleep. But, after twenty minutes of staring at the back of his eyelids, he gave up. He stood and walked around Éponine's apartment, but there wasn't much to see. Apart from a couch and a couple pieces of mail sitting on the counter, there was no sign that anybody lived there. No family pictures on the fridge, no books lying around, she didn't even have any dishes in the sink. The girl really didn't have anything to her name.

Éponine finally emerged from the bathroom, fully dressed. "Is that a new shirt?" he blurted. Why are you asking about her shirt?

Éponine looked down at the jewel-blue tee she was wearing. "It's Musichetta's. I don't have anything clean." Which wasn't surprising, since she owned about three shirts. "Is she still sleeping?"

Enjolras nodded.

"Wow it's…" she walked into the kitchen to check the clock. "Oh. It's seven. That's why."

"We should leave a note for her or something, just so she knows where you are."

Éponine rolled her eyes but started opening random drawers, trying to remember where she kept the notepads. She opened the fourth drawer with an 'aha!' and scribbled down a note.

"Do you expect her to read that?" Enjolras asked, picking the note up from the counter where Éponine had smacked it down. He squinted at the little scribbles.

"Go fu—wait. Did you just make a joke at me?"

"No," he said, despite the upward twitch of his lips that almost formed a smile.

"Should I be proud or worried?"

Enjolras shrugged. "Are you ready?"

"Yeah," she said, practically bouncing. He gave her a look. "I've spent the past two days stuck here. I used to be outside all day, sometimes for days at a time. I feel trapped."

Enjolras nodded. "Let's go."

Enjolras couldn't seem to get the door to unlock. He and Éponine had been standing there while he fumbled with the keys for at least a minute. But Éponine was starting to feel uncomfortable. Actually, she had felt uncomfortable ever since they had entered the building. It was the kind of place she used to steal from, not the kind where a friend would live. She mentally kicked herself for referring to Enjolras as a friend; he was an acquaintance at best.

"Move," she said, pushing him with a bony hip. "Keys," she demanded, but just grabbed them out of his hand. She shoved them into the keyhole, jostled twice, and the door clicked open.

"How did you—"

"I'm great at picking locks. It's even easier when I actually have keys."

"Should I be proud or worried?" he said, quoting her from earlier.

Éponine just shook her head and let herself into the apartment. "C'est des conneries!"* she said, looking around.

"What?"

"This place is fantastic!" And really, it was. It was really more of a maisonette than an apartment, with a living room and kitchen downstairs and an upstairs which (Éponine assumed) had a couple of bedrooms. It was probably three times the size of Éponine's apartment—really, it was more like a small house. The walls were a dark red and lined with bookshelves. Yet apparently these bookshelves weren't enough, because he also had books piled on the coffee table, as well as stacked beside the shelves.

Enjolras shrugged in response.

"Are you kidding me?!"

"No, I just mean—I didn't pick it out for myself. It's not where I would've chosen to live, that's all."

"Yeah, and where would you live?" it came across as a bit of an accusation.

Again, Enjolras shrugged. "Somewhere smaller."

Éponine raised her eyebrows.

"It's hard to enjoy it when there are tens of thousands of people who sleep on the streets every night."

"Why do you feel so guilty about having money? It's not like it's your fault."

Enjolras shook his head. "No, maybe not. But it's hard to call ourselves free when our brothers are oppressed and starving."

"Is that why you're always at the café? Or at the school? Because you feel guilty being here?"

"I'm going to go get changed," he said, avoiding the question.

"If you hate it so much, why don't you leave?" she asked, stopping him halfway up the stairs.

He paused, tapping his hand on the railing, deciding if he wanted to answer. "It's not that simple," he said finally, turning back to her.

"It was for me."

Well. "If I let my parents pay for the apartment, choose where I live—it makes them think they still have some say in my life. It was either this or drop out of school and get a job."

"So it's a necessary evil, then? Is that how you see it?"

He turned again to climb the stairs.

"You shouldn't feel guilty about having nice things. I know I wouldn't."

The college campus was big, and Éponine wanted to explore it. Enjolras had to practically drag her to the lecture hall.

"Wait," she said, stopping right outside the room. "Bathroom?"

He pointed her down the hall, and she practically ran. She shoved a stall door open and knelt just in time to empty her stomach into the toilet, which smelled offensively of cleaner. She practically laughed. Hadn't she promised Enjolras this morning that she wasn't going to puke in the class? At least she got it out now.

She tried to rinse out her mouth as much as she could, but she knew Enjolras would smell it on her. Thankfully, another girl came into the bathroom, saw what she was doing, and offered her a mint.

"Must've been some party," the other girl said, fixing her makeup in the mirror.

"Yeah, something like that."

Éponine left the bathroom, and found Enjolras waiting just outside. "Ready?" he asked, unsuspicious.

She noded, and he guided them to the classroom. It was large, intended for a large lecture of around a hundred students. But there were only about fifteen of them occupying the room.

They grabbed two seats—towards the front, of course—and Éponine could feel several pairs of eyes watching her. Most of them were harmless, merely curious of the new girl, but a few were more hostile.

When the professor entered, Enjolras stood and brushed past her, and Éponine thought he might have touched her shoulder but the contact was so fleeting she couldn't be sure.

The professor was a stout man, with an overwhelming mustache and hunched shoulders. Enjolras said something to him, and he looked at Éponine and nodded. "Just had to make sure he was okay with it," Enjolras explained when he sat back down.

"Alright, class," the professor said from behind the podium. "Today we will be discussing the parliamentary system." Éponine saw Enjolras shift in his seat, and she could sense his eagerness.

"Most of this you should've learned in your first year classes. If you haven't, well, better catch up quick then," he continued rather severely. The professor had a thick accent, maybe American, and it was hard to tell what he was saying. Éponine wondered how he an American got stuck teaching French politics.

"Monsieur Enjolras, maybe you would care to remind us the basic ideas of the parliamentary system. Consider it payment for bringing an unexpected guest. Although I hardly think it would be less than a pleasure for you."

Enjolras grinned, a rare sight for Éponine, and gave what might have been the most flawless definition of the parliamentary system any of the students had ever heard.

Éponine guessed this class was going to be interesting, and she was not disappointed. Not in the subject matter—to be honest, Éponine didn't understand a lot of it, but she did pick up bits and pieces—but more so in the way the class interacted with each other. The professor would offer a few sentences of an explanation, ask a question, and somebody—usually Enjolras, although a petite girl in the back seemed determined to get her word in as well—would answer. Sometimes their answers would spark another student to submit their opinion, and more than once there was a disagreement over a topic. The professor would just sit back and let the students figure it out themselves.

But Éponine was particularly intrigued (or at least amused) at Enjolras's behavior. She had seen him become passionate during the rally, and he was usually fairly zealous during the meetings. But this was different. She wasn't quite sure what it was, but she had a feeling it had to do with the fact that the class was just that, a class. Nothing more. Compared to the subject matter usually discussed during the meetings, this class was practically stress-free for him.

Éponine made a mental not to ask him about it later. But for now, she remained silent and merely watched. She found it to be a welcome distraction from the ache in her skin.

"So, what did you think?" he asked her as they exited the building.

But his phone ringing interrupted her response.

"Hello? Yeah, she's with me. Courfeyrac," he mouthed the name at her. "Wait, what? I don't understand what you're saying. Yeah, here she is," he said, thrusting the phone into Éponine's hands.

"Yeah?"

"Éponine, you have to get down here. It's Gavroche."

Éponine's heartbeat was thumping in her temples. "Is he okay?!"

"No. He had like twelve of those chocolate egg things and now he's taken over Call of Duty…" his sentence was cut off by a loud crash in the background.

Éponine barked a laugh. "We'll head over."

"One more thing," Courfeyrac stopped her before she could hang up.

"Yeah?"

"For the love of God, will you get your own phone? You're impossible to track down."

A/N:

*I've been told that c'est des conneries means "this is bullshit." I speak English and a bit of Spanish, so I wouldn't know. If we're gonna be honest, I just wanted the excuse to cuss in French.

Also, Trial Tactics and Methods is a real book, in case you were curious. It's only about 400 pages though.

Until next time!